Something I learned when studying different languages is that it is important to not try to directly translate everything. Every language has its own grammar and its own way of forming phrases. Therefore, when learning a language, we shouldn’t worry too much about how each individual word that we use in English is translated into other languages but rather learn whole phrases and sentence structures.
A couple reasons why direct translation might not work:
- Some English words don’t exist in other languages
- Some words in other languages don’t exist in English
- Languages use unique ways of expressing ideas
- For instance, in Spanish “tengo” means “I have.” However, it is also used to express how many years old you are.
A few tips for using translating websites:
- Put in whole phrases/ sentences rather than individual words
- Put in similar phrases to learn the nuances of the sentence structure
- If translation is doubtful, try searching on forums or reddit
Another tip is to not constantly translate everything back to our first language in our mind but rather try to think in our language of interest.
Happy learning.